ohio | The NewsGuild

Newsletter: USA Today’s chatbot is spreading misinformation

We’re fighting a recent attempt to allow broadcast monopolies across the United States, joining a broad coalition to challenge a recent order by the Federal Communications Commission.

Under legislation approved by Congress over 20 years ago, television station owners are currently prohibited from reaching over 39% of the U.S. national audience. When the FCC repealed that rule on October 1, it violated the law and that Congressional mandate.

Consolidation in the news industry is a driving reason we have lost tens of thousands of journalism jobs in the U.S. in the past 20 years. The current FCC has radically shifted to support more consolidation and monopolies, especially ones that are friendly to the Trump administration.

Journalists in Ohio withhold bylines over journalistic integrity concerns with USA TODAY Co. AI tool

Media contact: Heloise Hakimi, The NewsGuild Communications, hhakimi@cwa-union.org, (202) 679-9394

OHIO — Unionized journalists at the Akron Beacon Journal and Kent Ravenna Record-Courier in Ohio are demanding that their employer remove their names from stories featuring a new AI chatbot being implemented on their publications’ websites. They will be withholding their bylines from stories featuring the chatbot for 14 days, beginning Oct. 28 and spanning across the November 2026 General Election.

The staff cites serious concerns over editorial integrity with the DeeperDive tool used by USA TODAY Co., which owns both newspapers. The chatbot generates AI summaries of the papers’ coverage and was recently added to their publications’ websites. The tool violates the company’s current standards of requiring a “human in the loop” prior to publishing computer generated content online or in print. The workers are demanding the company pause the use of DeeperDive and follow its own AI policies.

“We have the right to withhold our bylines for reasons of journalistic integrity, and DeeperDive’s summaries don’t meet our standards as reporters or the standards USA TODAY Co. claims to follow,” says Akron NewsGuild Unit Chair Tawney Beans. “We don’t want our names on content that doesn’t meet common standards of editorial integrity. Community journalism requires real community members, not AI slop.”

RELEASE: Ohio’s greatest home newsroom is unionizing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Dec. 10, 2025

Media Contact: Bob Vitale, C: 614-805-6114, dispatchnewsguild@gmail.com

Columbus, Ohio — Newsroom employees at The Columbus Dispatch and Newark Advocate today announced they are forming the Dispatch News Guild to address fair pay and preserve local journalism jobs.

Signal Ohio workers win union recognition from employer

Contact: SONWG@gmail.com

Journalists powering Signal Ohio’s nonprofit newsrooms in Akron, Cleveland and Columbus won voluntary recognition of their union, making the Signal Ohio News Workers Guild an official member of the Northeast Ohio NewsGuild, Local 34001 of Communications Workers of America.